Accurx Files for IPO: UK Digital Health Platform Completes Over 100,000 Video Consultations During Pandemic and Wins Trust of 130+ Hospitals

During the pandemic, travel restrictions and barriers to accessing medical care spurred rapid growth in internet healthcare. Accurx, based in London, UK, is an online consultation platform that facilitates communication between doctors and patients. Founded in 2017, Accurx has completed four rounds of financing to date. The latest round occurred in February 2019, when the company announced the completion of an £8.8 million Series A financing led by the London-based venture capital firm Atomico, with participation from LocalGlobe and Entrepreneur First. Prior to this, the company had completed three investment rounds, raising a total of £9.1 million across four rounds over three years. What exactly is the appeal of Accurx that attracts investors to inject capital into the company?

Jacob Haddad, founder of accuRx, graduated from the University of Oxford in the UK with an MSc in Health Policy. During his studies, Jacob developed a strong interest in healthcare and published two graduate papers: “Why Do Healthcare Process Improvements Fail? How Can They Be Enhanced to Address the Challenges Facing the National Health Service?” and “A Case Study of Two University Teaching Hospitals.”

Prior to graduation, Jacob interned at Rothschild & Co, one of the world’s largest independent financial advisory groups. He worked in departments such as financial analysis and research, where he was responsible for providing daily updates to senior staff on market and industry developments. In November 2013, Jacob entered the healthcare sector for the first time, leading and participating in multiple improvement projects at the John Radcliffe Hospital, which is part of the Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. These projects involved developing and delivering recommendations to enhance the safety and reliability of clinical care for acute neurosurgery patients, as well as to improve the accuracy, capacity, and turnaround times of the hospital pharmacy.

In the following years, Jacob continuously accumulated knowledge in company operations and healthcare. In March 2016, he planned to establish his own healthcare-focused company and met Laurence Bargery later that same year.

Founder Laurence Bargery graduated from Queens’ College, Cambridge, earning an Honours Bachelor of Arts degree in Natural Sciences. Starting in 2013, Laurence worked at Core Developer for two years and five months, contributing to the Spiral Suite software package by developing core simulation engine software programs specifically designed for oil refineries. Since then, Laurence has remained in the IT sector, gaining expertise in TDD, NUnit, TeamCity, Visual Studio+, and ReSharper, while actively engaging in software development processes.

From the day they met, the two hit it off instantly, sharing a common goal and founding a company to achieve it.

Laurence Bargery(Left) andJacob Haddad(Right)

Jacob Haddad and Laurence Bargery have been proud of the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) since childhood. During the founding of accuRx, their interactions with physicians revealed that although doctors had gained more tools to address medical challenges, the way they communicated with patients remained unchanged.

Communication in healthcare faces significant challenges. Modern healthcare is delivered by teams rather than individuals. Healthcare organizations are handling ever-increasing volumes of data, yet current communication tools force healthcare professionals to rely on fax machines, pagers, email, and WhatsApp to contact patients—tools that are ill-equipped to manage the growing data load. The unprofessional nature of these communication methods causes physicians to waste considerable time each day, particularly when multi-team collaborative consultations are required. Furthermore, due to poor coordination of schedules, many urgent patients fail to receive timely care.

Thus, Jacob Haddad and Laurence Bargery recognized that the issue needing resolution in this field is:

1. Reduce time waste and decrease staff workload;

2. Adjust nursing schedules for different patients to ensure timely delivery of information to them;

3. Process relevant data more quickly.

So, how can the pain points of this industry be addressed? To tackle this issue, accuRx developed its first flagship product, Chain SMS, and is currently expanding its adoption across more NHS (National Health Service) GP (General Practitioner) practices, thereby fulfilling the company’s commitment to the NHS: providing technology that enables efficient, accessible, and high-quality care.

AccuRx Chain is software accredited by EMIS (a global provider of business information for emerging markets) and SystmOne (a centrally hosted clinical computer system), operating as an application on PCs. Chain SMS connects directly with EMIS and SystmOne, enabling doctors to send text messages to selected patients.

Chain SMS serves as a platform for communication between patients and physicians, offering a rapid and direct means of connection. Staff no longer need to repeatedly call patients who do not answer, and patients no longer need to chase after their healthcare providers; they simply await SMS notifications. This approach alleviates the heavy workload of medical staff and reduces time waste, specifically patients’ waiting time.

Chain SMS enables GP practices (the foundation and core of primary care within the NHS system) to send text messages to patients, reminding them to book important tests, delivering critical follow-up information after appointments are completed, and advising them on necessary precautions. All content sent by Chain SMS users is saved to the patient’s medical record. The service currently integrates the advantages of most IT systems used in practice, with each message taking less than 30 seconds to send. If doctors use one of the pre-prepared templates in the system, it takes even less time.

Practice has shown that patients are more likely to respond to invitations sent via SMS. Often, patients are unable to answer phone calls from physicians due to other commitments. Various scenarios have demonstrated that SMS invitations are more readily accepted and offer greater convenience. This approach ensures that patients receive messages in a timely manner, allowing healthcare providers to dedicate more time to patients requiring intensive care.

The healthcare industry has always required round-the-clock staffing, as unforeseen events inevitably arise that necessitate medical personnel to work on the front lines. This, in turn, means that a substantial volume of data must be processed.

Leveraging a powerful data processor, accuRx can simultaneously process data from both patients and clinicians. Patient data typically includes names, identifiers (assigned by the system upon initial patient registration), email addresses, phone numbers, message content (messages received by patients via secure surveys and their responses to such messages), and relevant data related to the use of other applications. accuRx processes this data only when clinicians send messages to patients. accuRx also processes healthcare professionals’ data, which typically includes job titles, affiliated organizations, gender, and dates of birth.

AccuRx also collects usage data, such as when users open and close AccuRx’s software, the product features they use, and information about the versions of their computers. This enables AccuRx to better understand user workflows and thereby improve its software functionalities, monitor the performance of AccuRx’s software based on frequency-of-use data, and prevent fraud, cyberattacks, and other dishonest activities.

However, the healthcare sector is not merely about data processing; greater emphasis must be placed on the confidentiality of patient information. accuRx has also taken note of this issue. In healthcare, the robustness of privacy protection and information governance serves as a critical criterion for evaluating the quality of IT systems.

AccuRx hosts its servers in the Microsoft Azure data centre in London. AccuRx adheres to best practice guidelines from NHS Digital, the UK National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), and Microsoft. All data is encrypted both in transit (during transmission) and at rest (during storage). Furthermore, during video consultations between patients and clinicians, AccuRx complies with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and DCB0129/DCB0160 clinical safety standards. Video and audio communications are visible only to participants in the call and are transmitted via encrypted connections. No data is recorded or stored on any servers. Video consultations prioritise peer-to-peer connections between clinicians’ and patients’ devices and follow NHS best practice guidelines for cloud security in health and social care.

2020 was an extraordinary year. Just after the Lunar New Year's Eve, China entered a state of emergency preparedness. Thanks to the concerted efforts of healthcare workers across the country, the epidemic was brought under effective control. However, other countries soon faced their own COVID-19 crises. In this context, many medical technology suppliers have been assisting the NHS in responding to the ongoing novel coronavirus outbreak.

AccuRx, Modality Systems, Refero, and X-on have also joined the effort to ensure that doctors have the tools to identify patients who may be exhibiting viral symptoms or are self-isolating, thereby limiting the spread of the coronavirus.

This includes the UK-based startup accuRx, which powers the ChainSMS service. accuRx’s platform enables doctors to send text messages to patients, requesting them to book tests, sending follow-up information after appointments, and notifying them when their test results are ready.

In response to growing concerns over COVID-19, accuRx announced the development of two new products: video consultations and pre-appointment screening. accuRx launched video consultations to help ensure the safety of staff and patients during the COVID-19 pandemic. During this period, accuRx facilitated 100,000 GP video consultations and 10,000 hospital video consultations, with 130 different hospitals trialing its products.

Additionally, Jacob Haddad, co-founder of accuRx, stated on Twitter that the company is developing a new version to facilitate outpatient appointment scheduling for hospital staff, aiming to contribute to the pandemic response.